Gravity and the Luminescent Age of Torah - Devarim 5773 (Summer Sermon Series #3)

When I was in AP Physics in high school, I recall my teacher, Mr. Blackmer, teaching us about gravity. Some of you might remember (if you dig deep enough into your memory) that Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation is as follows:

             m1m2

F = G ────

               r2

where:

F is the measure of gravitational force between two objects

G is the gravitational constant

m1 and m2 are the masses of the two objects

r is the distance between them

Usually, when we think of gravity, it is in the context of our relationship with the Earth. The Earth is turning, and the reason we are not all flung off into space is because gravitational attraction keeps us tethered to the ground. But we attract the Earth as much as the Earth attracts us. Mr. Blackmer wanted to demonstrate that gravitational attraction affects both bodies, and that when we jump up (for example), the Earth pulls us back down just as we pull the Earth up to us. Yes, the distance that we are pulling the Earth is vanishingly small. But it’s there. So Mr. Blackmer suggested the following: whenever you’re feeling down, and powerless, jump! It’s a reminder that you can affect really big things.

And then, to demonstrate, he jumped up, and the Earth moved just a wee bit to meet him.

Gravity is, I think, a nice image to illustrate the relationship between Jews and Jewish learning. Torah (used in its widest sense) is a huge mass of information, and many Jews are attracted to it, some more than others. And by studying it, we affect the entire body of Jewish learning, even if only by a little, because when we learn, we insert ourselves into the text.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that the highest mitzvah of Jewish life is Talmud Torah, the learning of Torah in its widest sense, including all the texts of the rabbinic canon (Mishnah, Gemara, midrash, commentaries ancient and modern, and so forth). I spoke about the fact that more of us are studying Torah now than ever before, mostly due to access to new translations and new electronic tools for learning the greatest works of Jewish tradition. I can read Maimonides on my phone; I can search the Shulhan Arukh (R. Yosef Caro’s 16th century codification of Jewish law) on my desktop; you can study the Talmud on a tablet anywhere.

Judaism has entered the information age. In just a few years, the very idea of paper books will seem unwieldy and quaint. The implications for how we interact with Judaism are tremendous; we have always been “the People of the Book.” Somehow, “the People of the E-book” doesn’t quite work as well.

Shabbat issues aside, these new electronic Jewish resources are good for the Jews. We are living in a Luminescent Age of learning Torah, which bodes well for the future of Judaism. The availability of all of our holy texts at our fingertips means that more of us will seek (well, search) and more of us will find. And more of us will discover the value of learning Torah, of struggling with Jewish text.

We read this morning the beginning of the book of Devarim / Deuteronomy, the fifth and last book of the Torah. It opens with the phrase, “Elleh ha-devarim” “These are the words that Moshe addressed to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan.” (It is worth noting here that although devarim in modern Hebrew means “things,” it is classically understood as “words.”)

Elleh ha-devarim. It is the beginning of the end of the Torah. We are now forty years after yetzi’at Mitzrayim, the departure from Egypt, and on the East Bank of the Jordan River (funny how the “East Bank” never comes up in the news!), and Moshe is delivering a book-length speech to the Israelites prior to his death.

Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman, aka Ramban, aka Nachmanides, the prolific commentator of 13th-century Spain, in his introduction to Devarim, observes that “Elleh ha-devarim” implies all of the laws given in the book from the Ten Commandments forward. A few verses later in Devarim (1:5), we read the following:

בְּעֵבֶר הַיַּרְדֵּן, בְּאֶרֶץ מוֹאָב, הוֹאִיל מֹשֶׁה, בֵּאֵר אֶת-הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת...

On the other side of the Jordan, in the land of Moab, Moses undertook to expound this Teaching...

Rashi suggests that this verse means that prior to his death, Moshe translated the entire Torah into seventy languages, the seventy that are traditionally thought of in rabbinic text as the original languages created in the Tower of Babel episode.

Put together, these ideas suggests to me that these medieval commentators saw the book of Devarim as a symbol of the Torah writ large, an iconic representation of all Jewish learning - the laws, the stories, the translation and commentary, and everything that flows from it. Translation, by the way, is not only a form of commentary in itself; it was also thought of rabbinically as intrinsic to the learning of Torah. In the Talmud, Tractate Berakhot 8a, we are urged to read the entire Torah three times each year, twice in the Hebrew and once in translation or with commentary. The Talmud goes further to promise that those who do so will enjoy long life.

These devarim, these words - they are our heritage, our past, present and future.

Ladies and gentlemen, I suspect that, more than Shabbat, more than kashrut, more than the physical aspects of Jewish observance, it is our collected body of knowledge and our commitment to study that has kept us Jewish. The Babylonians, the Romans, the Islamic conquests, the Crusaders, the Inquisition, the Nazis - they could destroy our holy places. But they could not destroy what we carried in our heads and in our hearts. The gravitational attraction of our mass of Torah has kept us from flying off into oblivion, kept us on the ground.

But there is even more to the story. Rashi and Ramban and their fellow commentators are only a fraction of the journey that has brought these devarim, these words to us here today. For nearly two thousand years, since the beginnings of rabbinic literature, we have engaged as a people in the teaching, learning, interpreting, commenting, arguing over, creating and re-creating Torah. Every generation in every place where Jews have lived has, in some sense, shaped the Torah. We read the story of Creation differently here and now than our ancestors did in Jerusalem in the first century. We read the Exodus story differently today than the Spanish exiles of the 15th century. We understand Moshe’s rebuke of the people differently than Moses Maimonides did in Egypt of the 12th century, or Moses Mendelson did in 18th century Germany. And all of these may be effectively included in the mass of Torah that is all part of how we read it today - we are the next point in the Torah continuum, the next “dor” in “ledor vador,” from generation to generation.

The 20th-century German Jewish philosopher Martin Buber envisioned the revelation at Sinai, the moment when God gives Moshe the tablets of the Torah, as a kind of collision of humans with the Divine.  The Sinai experience left both God and humans fundamentally changed, like moving objects that crash into each other and exchange their momentum. The same is true for the words of our tradition. Every time we pull those books off of the Jewish bookshelf, every time we engage with our sacred texts, we are fundamentally changed, and so are the ancient words for all who come after us. And revelation continues even today, as Torah unfolds and God reveals more to us. We change, God changes, and the very nature of Judaism changes.

And that is one key to understanding who we are in the Conservative movement, and who we are at Temple Israel. We conserve tradition; we return to our traditional books year after year. But we also acknowledge that tradition has changed, that the Judaism of today is unique to this time and and to this place, but still connected to what came before.

I want to wrap this up by addressing something that happened in Israel this week, which will also serve as a connecting piece to the next two sermons in the series, on egalitarianism and Israel.

On Monday morning, Rosh Hodesh Av, the Women of the Wall and their supporters, about 350 people, showed up at the Kotel / Western Wall in Jerusalem for their monthly prayer service, the first such service since the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that it is legal (!) for anybody to pray at the Kotel “according to their custom.” In the case of Women of the Wall, that means praying out loud in a group, with some wearing tallitot and tefillin. We will speak more next week about why doing these things are acceptable under halakhah, Jewish law.

But it is not acceptable to the Haredi sector of Orthodoxy. To prevent the WoW from praying according to their custom, Haredi rabbis ordered girls’ seminaries to bus their students to the Kotel at 6:30 AM, half an hour before WoW meets, to fill up the Kotel plaza with people so that the WoW group could not get much further than the entry gates. Furthermore, a group of Haredim blew whistles, jeered and shouted at them, held aloft offensive signs, and a few threw bottles and eggs at those who were trying to daven. The police allowed the WoW to hold their service, and detained those that threw things. You can see video of this here.

It is true that many of us in the Jewish world read our sources and traditions differently, and it is a shame and embarrassment that some of us who hold the idea of Torah so dear choose to fight against an interpretation that conflicts with their own. Disagreement is a part of the continuum of Torah; on any given page of the Jewish bookshelf, one may find arguments that are leshem shamayim, for the sake of heaven. But mean-spirited, nearly-violent protests against other Jews who are trying to worship in a way that is condoned by 80% of the Jewish world?

This is why we at Temple Israel, in the Conservative world, must give in to the gravity of Torah. Let it pull you in. We must step up our efforts to engage with Torah, and not let the fundamentalists dictate how to read our holy books and how to interact with God.

Read it not as “Elleh ha-devarim,” these are the words, but rather, “Elleh devareinu,” these are OUR words. This is the living tradition that we have received from God, and that has been passed down to us via our ancestors. Every hand that has touched it has changed it just a little bit. And the next hand will always be yours.

The words of Torah include you. Find yourself in the text! It’s your heritage. We have, of course, many opportunities to learn here at Temple Israel, and if you want to dive into Torah but do not know where to start, come see me. Do not let the Luminescent Age of Torah pass you by!

Don’t fight against the gravity of Torah. Jump, and it will come up to meet you (but just a little bit).

Shabbat shalom!

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, July 13, 2013.) 

The first two installments in the Summer Sermon Series may be found here:

1. Leading With Our Narrative

2. Elevating Ourselves Through Words of Welcome

Summer Sermon Series #2: Elevating Ourselves Through Words of Welcome - Mattot/Mas'ei 5773

Shabbat shalom! We are into the second topic of the seven-part summer sermon series about the most essential parts of Temple Israel’s vision: being a welcoming congregation. Here is a brief sketch of the series:

1. Telling our narrative (6/29 - Pinehas)

2. Welcoming (7/6 - Mattot-Mas’ei)

3. Learning / Torah (7/13 - Devarim)

4. Egalitarianism (7/20 - Va-ethannan)

5. Israel (7/27 - Eqev)

6. Repairing the World (8/3 - Re’eh)

7. Tradition and Change (8/10 - Shofetim)

Considering the list of topics above, you might think that Torah comes before welcoming. Let me tell you why we are addressing welcoming first. Consider the following mishnah from Pirqei Avot, the collection of rabbinic wisdom which is traditionally studied in the summer months (3:21):

אם אין תורה, אין דרך ארץ; אם אין דרך ארץ, אין תורה.

Im ein Torah, ein derekh eretz. Im ein derekh eretz, ein Torah.

One possible translation: “If there is no Torah, there is no respect. If there is no respect, there is no Torah.”

“Derekh eretz,” while often translated idiomatically as “respect,” is more literally rendered as “the way of the land.” It refers to how we treat others as we go through life, and suggests to me, from an ancient Middle Eastern perspective (arguably the most important one when interpreting Jewish text), how strangers are treated when they are passing through your village, or how you might be treated when passing through somebody else’s territory. The point, of course, is that in the desert, you pay it forward: this time, I’ll give you food, water, and shelter; next time, you’ll give some to me.

Our patriarch Abraham is an exemplar of derekh eretz when he welcomes traveling strangers (acutally angels) into his tent and gives them food and water at the beginning of Parashat Vayyera. But even in today’s world, derekh eretz still carries a traditional sense among desert-dwellers, and it refers specifically to welcoming others into your tent.

When I was studying at the WUJS Institute in Arad, Israel in 1999, I did a lot of hiking in the desert around Arad, which is located not far from the Dead Sea in the southern Judean Hills. One day, a friend of mine and I were hiking nearby, and we wandered into a Bedouin camp - there were a few tents (well, temporary structures made of corrugated iron) surrounding a pen with a few horses and other animals. And there was a dog, which, when it spotted us, started barking and raising a ruckus. A middle-aged Bedouin gentlemen in contemporary Israeli clothes came out of his tent, spotted us, and beckoned to us to come in. We obliged, and sit on his poured concrete floor (this was a fancy tent) covered with rugs and pillows, alongside his Japanese SUV, and chatted in Hebrew about his work in the construction business as he gave us tea and water. A few other men in kaffiyas joined us, and we sat politely and soaked up the derekh eretz, and schmoozed with these Bedouin, whom we would otherwise never have met.

Without welcoming others into our tent, we will never get to the Torah. Without derekh eretz, there can be no Torah, no Israel, no community. Welcoming others in is the foundation of Judaism, and it is time for us to take it to the next level.

We read today at the beginning of Parashat Mattot about the power and significance of our words. We are able, through vows, to make a binding commitment that cannot be violated. As Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch taught, a vow is “self-imposed legislation.” Vows are so important that there is an entire tractate of the Talmud, Massekhet Nedarim, devoted to the particulars of what constitutes a vow and its implications.

This is just one example of how our tradition elevates words, and how words can elevate us; our lips can praise and curse, heal and wound, impose a vow and break it. Jewish ritual is always accompanied by powerful words.

I would like to suggest the following: We as individual members of this congregation should all take the following vow: to work as hard as possible at welcoming others into this community.

Now, I am not suggesting that we are not friendly. On the contrary, as synagogues go, we are pretty good. In fact, we were roundly complimented by the Board of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, which met here about a month ago. (United Synagogue is, of course, the umbrella organization of Conservative congregations.) Our member Marty Werber, who serves on the USCJ Board, reported back to us that many members of the Board came away from their visit to Temple Israel with the impression that they were made to feel welcome here, and that is a strong statement; these guys see a lot of congregations, so they have what to compare us to. And we came up pretty well. So Kol Hakavod.

Here is another example: at Tot Shabbat two weeks ago, the first held in the Blue Room, a guest parent exclaimed to my wife Judy, not aware that she is the rebbetzin, how friendly our congregation is. That’s another nice compliment.

And look at all we have accomplished in this regard in the last couple of years:

• We have pioneered the Nitzanim Family Connection, a program that brings together parents of children who are beginning their religious school experience to discuss what it means to be Jewish parents;
• We put together a phenomenally successful pre-bar-mitzvah retreat for the Vav class families;
• We have started a social group for empty nesters and one for parents of young children (called Temple Israel Bonds, the first event, a barbecue, is on August 1 - see Jackie Astrof for details, and there is a flyer out front);
• We have created new offerings in the Youth House to reach out to teens more effectively;
• We have offered adult learning programs in congregants’ homes that welcomes both TIGN members and non-members and thereby creates new connections within our wider community that synagogue-based programs do not necessarily foster.

We have also made it a point, as you may have noticed, to re-arrange the sanctuary (at least some of the time) in a way that many find more inviting, and we often have one rabbi standing at the back with the other greeters and Shabbat officers, to make sure that everybody is properly welcomed, and we have initiated a task-force discussion to talk about our religious services here, and to consider more carefully how we approach them. Focus on the welcoming aspects of our tefillah / prayer experience will surely be a part of that discussion.

However, there is always room for improvement. A few years back, a colleague and friend of mine, Rabbi Kate Palley, was visiting here at Temple Israel for Sukkot. She came early to services, and was davening quietly to herself when she realized that somebody sitting in front of her seemed somewhat agitated, and was looking and pointing at Rabbi Kate and talking to a friend in an animated fashion. At some point, the friend comes over and says, “You’re in his seat!” She moved, and was otherwise undeterred. But is that really the impression that we want to give visitors?

Furthermore, we cannot afford to welcome only those who are already in the building. We have to work a little harder, to reach beyond these walls.

Why is being welcoming so important? Because building this community, as I mentioned last week, is the central pillar of maintaining Temple Israel's strength, for supporting the egalitarian approach to Judaism that we value in an increasingly non-egalitarian community, for ensuring that modern understandings of Judaism and an open approach to the Torah are given a fair shake in the theological marketplace. And there are many people in our wider community who respond positively to our take on Jewish life when they experience it.

By inviting others in and making them feel like a part of us, we stand a chance of growing.  There is no shortage of unaffiliated Jews out there, some of whom may be amenable to finding a spiritual home in a qehillah qedoshah, a sacred community such as ours. But they likely will not join unless we reach out to them and make personal connections.

I am going to frame this issue another way. We read elsewhere in Pirqei Avot the following (2:5):

הלל אומר, אל תפרוש מן הציבור

Hillel omer: Al tifrosh min hatzibbur

Hillel says, “Do not withdraw from the community.”

Well, ladies and gentlemen, we are living in a time in which many Jews have, in fact, separated themselves from their community. But I think that this statement implies that just as we personally are obligated not to separate ourselves, we are also encouraged to act on the converse of that statement: that is, not to allow others to separate from us, the Jewish community. Chabad, Aish HaTorah, and other such Orthodox organizations commit much of their energy to doing exactly that; we need to do so as well, so that those who are unaffiliated are exposed to all of the values that we cherish as modern Jews committed to traditional Judaism.

In other words, we, individual members of Temple Israel, and not just the clergy and the officers, have to reach out, to take on the personal challenge of inviting others to join us. Like Abraham and my Bedouin buddy, we have to go outside the tent and invite others in.

So that is why I want everybody here to take a “vow” today: to be an ambassador of welcoming for Temple Israel, even off the synagogue grounds. Let’s kick it up a notch - let our words of greeting and invitation elevate ourselves and this community. To that end, here are a few action items:  

1. Whenever you are in the building, take Maimonides’ advice and greet everybody with a smile (Mishneh Torah Hilkhot De’ot 2:7).
2. If you have a friend who is unaffiliated but may be open to visiting, let Rabbi Stecker or I know and we might be able to suggest a point of entry best suited to her or him.
3. Find one person whom you do not know at kiddush each week with whom to strike up a conversation. Likewise, you might even want to introduce members of this community who may not know each other.
4. If you bring a guest to TIGN, introduce him or her to me and to a member of the Board or the Membership committee. If you do not know any board members, ask me, and I’ll hook you up.
5. If you have a tech-savvy young person in your orbit, ask them to “like” our Facebook page, and/or to follow @TempleIsraelGN on Twitter. Spreading information far and wide is easy today if you’re connected to the Internet, which we are.

Shabbat shalom! Next week, we’ll talk about the value of learning Torah.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, July 6, 2013.)

Summer Sermon Series #1: Leading With Our Narrative - Pinehas 5773

I rarely have time for television, and in fact there have been times in recent years when I have questioned whether paying for cable is indeed a fiscally-sound choice.

However, two years ago Judy and I acquired a guilty pleasure: Mad Men, the series about a 1960s-era Madison Avenue advertising agency. It is an extraordinarily well-crafted show, and we take great pleasure in watching the characters and storylines unfold from week to week. Mad Men has just concluded its sixth season, and just a few episodes ago we realized that the series creators planted information in early episodes that fed into the later ones. I really do not have time for this, but it makes me want to go back and review those early episodes to put the entire puzzle together (fortunately, I have them on DVR.)

That is the power of narrative. It connects us; it draws us in.

Usually, I give a sermon once a month or so. This is the first time that I will be doing it for seven straight Shabbatot. I have been inspired by Mad Men to plot out these seven sermons very carefully so that they all fit together in a natural progression. What we will have, after this seven-part series is complete, is a blueprint for a vision of what Temple Israel is: who we are as a community, what we stand for, what we believe. So the topics that we will be discussing today and the next six Shabbatot are as follows:

1. Leading with our narrative (Pinehas)

2. Welcoming Others (Mattot - Mas'ei)

3. Learning / Torah (Devarim)

4. Egalitarianism (Va-ethannan)

5. Israel (Eqev)

6. Repairing the World (Re’eh)

7. Tradition and Change (Shofetim)

Why do this at all? Why not merely discuss the weekly parashah?

Having been here in Great Neck for six years, some things have come into focus. We now have a professional staff in place that is solid, works well together, and is supremely capable of making things happen. That is very good news for this community, because when the professionals work well together, we are able to build. And our ultimate goal is to continue to build – to build a congregation of shared Jewish values, of close-knit social involvement, of personal connections forged in the context of qehillah qedoshah, a holy community.

And of course, building means attracting others to join our qehillah. To do so, we need to be the kind of community that people want to join. And that's not such an easy sell nowadays.  Most Jewish involvement today can be characterized as “episodic.” That is, people show up from lifecycle event to lifecycle event, or perhaps from holiday to holiday. For the vast majority of us, the days of regular attendance at synagogue events, that is, services or dinners or volunteer activities or events, when many American Jews saw the synagogue as the center of their social lives, are largely gone. And that makes the task of attracting others even harder. After all, how can you justify spending thousands of dollars on synagogue dues when you will rarely take advantage of what the synagogue offers?

As a rabbi, my primary goal is to teach Torah, in the widest sense of that word, as I discussed in this space two weeks ago. We as a congregation can spread more Torah if we have more people tuned in to what we offer. And the way to reach more people is as follows:

1. We must have a clear sense of who we are and what we stand for. Now, of course we do not agree on everything. But there are some basic principles here that differentiate us from other congregations, and those are the items upon which we must focus.
2. We have to invite people in. If nobody new comes in, and we do not reach out to new people, Temple Israel will not continue long into the future. I will be speaking more extensively about that next week.
3. We have to tell our story more effectively - that is, who we are, what we stand for, and why being a part of this community is worth your time and your financial investment. Telling our story will strengthen our core and draw others in.

And that is today’s theme: We must lead with the narrative of who we are.

So who are we?

The sign out front on Old Mill Road defines us as a “Conservative, Egalitarian Synagogue.” That's a good start; we are committed to the principles of Conservative Judaism, including an open approach to Judaism that incorporates contemporary scholarship when studying Jewish text, a sense that Judaism has always been open to change and outside influence, that halakhic observance is important, but not necessarily the only or even the highest aspiration of Jewish life, that men and women are considered equal under Jewish law and tradition, and that change within Judaism comes about conservatively, that is, through careful consideration of the relevant sources and customs (hence the name of our movement). But that is not enough.

Our congregational narrative, that is, story of Temple Israel’s past, present, and future, includes not only those things, but also the following:

א. That Rabbi Mordecai Waxman served as the Senior Rabbi here for 55 years, and during that time not only wrote the book whose title became the unofficial slogan of the Conservative movement in the latter half of the 20th century (i.e. “Tradition and Change”), but also became a pioneer in egalitarianism by calling his own wife, Ruth Waxman, to the Torah in 1976, far earlier than most Conservative synagogues. As such, this congregation has been something of a standard-bearer for the movement and for egalitarianism for half a century.

ב. That the growth of this congregation, one of the largest Conservative congregations in the New York area, came after World War II, when many Ashkenazi Jews were leaving urban enclaves for leafier suburbs, and that the last quarter of the 20th century brought an influx of Jews who had left Iran in the wake of the revolution there. This synagogue, therefore, is unusual in the Conservative movement because of its rich ethnic diversity, and this is a strength upon which we continually draw.

ג. That Rabbi Stecker, Cantor Frieder, Rabbi Roth, Danny Mishkin, Leon Silverberg, Rachel Mathless and I, and a complement of lay volunteers are working very hard to maintain our level of quality in programming, educational offerings, and ritual services. Furthermore, we, in partnership with the laity, are committed to developing a vision of the Temple Israel of the future, a vision that will incorporate all of the items that I will be discussing over the next six Shabbatot.

ד. That although Temple Israel of Great Neck is one of the oldest congregations on this peninsula, the landscape has changed. We are now one of 20 or so synagogues, most of which are Orthodox. Just as we embrace diversity within our immediate community, we seek to maintain diversity and cooperation without.  It is of vital importance for TIGN to survive as the sole Conservative congregation and thrive on the peninsula for the sake of Kelal Yisrael, the idea that all Jews are interconnected as a nation. But it is also essential that we look outward as well. I mentioned two weeks ago that I hope that in the near future we will look for opportunities to reach outside these walls, particularly through learning Torah together with our neighbors.

****

This communal narrative must be told and retold. The way that we build connections between people is by having them share their stories: our individual, personal stories and collective stories. Our congregation is not just a place to come to services or to get “bar mitzvahed”. It is a strong, vital community of more than 900 families, each with their own stories, and each a part of our communal narrative. Narrative, storytelling, builds connections, and builds community.

Parashat Pinehas is the parashah that we read from most frequently throughout the year. It contains instructions to the kohanim / priests for the sacrifices that were performed in the Temple in Jerusalem for every holiday. Today, we continue to read this passage about how to perform rituals that have not been performed for 1,943 years, as of the 17th of Tammuz, this past Tuesday. That is the day that the Mishnah (Ta’anit 4:6) identifies as the date when the daily Tamid offering ceased, when the Romans breached the walls of Jerusalem in the year 70 CE. Since then (more or less), we have given the words of our mouths and hearts as offerings to God in place of animal sacrifice; I think that this is a much better path to holiness and communication with God.

But here’s the important part: the rabbis could have decided, in the wake of the Temple’s destruction, that reading the parts of the Torah related to sacrifice, such as this one, was no longer relevant to us and thus could be omitted. Instead, they insisted not only that we read them, but that we read the entire Torah every year. Instead of casting them aside, we incorporated the story of the sacrifices and the destruction of the Temple into our national story in many other ways as well: we mention it at various points of our tefillot; we invoke it at various holy moments, such as when we add salt to our hallah at Shabbat meals, or when we break a glass at the conclusion of a wedding; and of course it is the theme of the Three Weeks that stretch from last Tuesday until Tish’ah Be’Av, the Ninth Day of Av, this year on July 16.

The Torah is the essence of the Jewish narrative; as Jews, we lead with that narrative, and it has been a rallying point for millennia. It has kept us Jewish, and enabled us to thrive through centuries of oppression and wandering.

Our communal story here at Temple Israel, as we have begun to discuss this week, is the focal point that makes us strong as a community, that keeps us coming back to the synagogue, and that attracts new members. We need to tell it and retell it, just like the Torah.

Next week, we’ll talk about inviting people in. Shabbat shalom!